Women of Note: A Century of Australian Composers Volume 2
rec. 1979-2019
ABC CLASSICS 481 9111 [71:07 + 67:39]
Like probably many readers, I have, sadly, missed Volume 1 of this project to record some little known and indeed unknown music by some of Australia’s talented and overlooked women. Hugh Robertson, the executive producer of ABC Classics writes of the joy “to see how much enthusiasm there is for the project across the board”. Many of the recordings having emerged from the ABC archives.
Disc 1 opens with a lyrical and pastoral three-movement Sonata for violin and piano by Dulcie Holland. She had been a pupil of John Ireland. The piece does seem to be written with him looking over her shoulder, but none the worse for that. Holland’s educational music is still in use. She was an examiner for the Australian Music Examining Board, and wrote film scores. She was highly professional and imaginative. This applies to almost all of the music recorded here: just because the composer earns a living from teaching or something else does not make her an amateur.
Robertson tells us that the concert in 1999 to mark the 100th birthday of Linda Philips resulted in “one of my life’s great musical discoveries”. There were almost no recordings of her music available, and he felt that her “chamber music was crying out to be heard”. So from that concert we have her Exaltation described as a Chassidic Air and Dance. The oboe part is written as if it were a shofar. The composer was then exploring her Jewish ancestry, and created a unique and fascinating work.
Miriam Hyde was born and lived in Adelaide, that most English of Australian cities (an impression from my brief stay there in 2011). Not surprisingly, her Village Fair does have an English inter-war feel to it. It may also be because she studied at the Royal College of Music. This orchestral romp might may well evoke a maypole dance, a fiddler with a drone and lively games on the green quoting towards the end ‘O dear what can the matter be’.
Margaret Sutherland, the most senior of the composers on these discs, was a pupil of Arnold Bax. Her tone poem Haunted Hills is a magnificent work.It is inspired by a walk in the Dandenong Ranges where the indigenous peoples roamed before first their “bewilderment and then their betrayal”. The opening slow section is anguished and harsh, the later faster music is more dance-like. This is one of fifteen orchestral works Sutherland composed in the last thirty-five years of her long life.
Moya Henderson took an exciting trip into the depths of Tasmania to venture into a famous Kudikynah Cave. This was the inspiration behind a commission for string quartet. A brief and mostly tonal work, it perhaps rambles a little but has a distinctive atmosphere.
Katia Tiutiunnik admits to influences from Asia to Islamic mysticism. Indeed, she was appointed Professor of Music in China’s SIAS University as recently as November 2019. The Quickening proves its inspiration in a short fantasy for flute and piano encompassing a variety of moods and tempi and often using some rather exotic scalic passages.
CD 1 ends with a piece you might just recognise, by one of Australia’s best-known composers, Elena Kats-Chernin. It is the wordless Eliza Aria from the music she wrote for the film Wild Swans. Its quirky, bouncy melody is easily remembered, and you will not be surprised to know that the composer is also known for her music for children.
Ten composers are represented on disc 2. Katy Abbott’s Punch lives up to its name: it is brash and jazzy, scored for brass and percussion. A good opener.
Mary Finsterer has been embarking on a series of pieces entitled Missed Tales inspired initially by making up stories for her children. She then got the idea of a book of stories “hundreds of year’s old found in a cave in Northern Europe”. These are adventure stories with a hero on a journey. Lake Ice is scored for orchestra and double bass. It is not a concerto but the soloist does have to carve out his own furrow, often in a much higher register than is usual. There is a Harry Potterish sense in the slightly over-worked material. I was also reminded of the Icelandic composer Jón Leifs. The work’s coldness is not what one expects from an Australian composer. The performance is wonderfully vivid.
Amanda Coles’s Glocken Blocken is scored for marimba and cowbells. She likes the fact that they are not quite in tune with each other, and has written other pieces using microtonal structures and several pieces for percussion. This brief rhythmic romp catches the attention for just long enough.
I was not so taken with Miriama Young’s Time and Tide, a tribute one might say to Sydney harbour. Three brass instruments are given chorales and fanfares. A colourful variety of percussion are interspersed alongside sounds recorded on the harbour itself, including a ferry announcement. Written for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and its fellows, I hope it meant more to them than to me.
Natalie Nicolas is the youngest composer represented here. She worked with adolescents “growing up in a hospital space” and amongst other things talked with them about their hardship, and about music. I expect they have by now enjoyed her We won’t let you down, scored for strings, not very long and always rhythmic but with a Peter Sculthorpe-like visit of exotic birds in its final bars.
Also commissioned by the Hush Foundation is Rachel Bruerville’s Dancing on Tiptoes, a title suggested to her by “an insightful young person” at the hospital. It is a light-hearted easy-going and tuneful piece of not especial consequence but, like the Nicolas piece, it clearly serves a musical and societal purpose.
Ella Macheins is the second-youngest composer recorded here. In The Space Between Stars we are asked to imagine ourselves lying on the earth, staring at the starlit night sky, perhaps asking ourselves if our ancestors end up shining down on us. This is a lusciously orchestrated, tonal film-like tone poem in one mood and tempo but rising to an impressive and beautiful climax.
Deborah Cheetham is described as a Yorta Yorta woman. That is why her Eumerella, a War Requiem for Peace has texts in the Gunditjmara language. She was utterly moved by a visit to a battlefield where fierce conflicts took place in the mid 19th century between the European settlers and the Aboriginal Australians. This piece is to be performed by successors of those peoples. Two movements have been offered to us, including an Agnus Dei, which acts as a prayer for the slaughtered indigenous families. The setting is for soloists, choir and orchestra.
The last work does not bring the set musically to a cheerful conclusion but in the context of the pieces recorded it fits well. It is Wilga’s Last Dance by Nardi Simpson, described as a Yuwaalaraay writer, musician composer and educator. An Aboriginal Australian from New South Wales, she uses an extremely ancient melody from her homeland. This is gently scattered across a small wind band, sparsely harmonised and creating a remote landscape atmosphere.
Whist it would be true to say that not all of the recordings and all of the pieces are quite perfect, the performances of each are superb. The composers must have been delighted. This double CD set comes with an truly excellent booklet. There are pictures of all of the composers, an extensive biography on each and a description of the background to each composition, mostly by the composers themselves. A top-quality enterprise made all the more poignant by the plans each of the living composers had for 2020 both as performers and as composers, which have for now, at least, been frustrated.
Gary Higginson
Contents
Disc 1
Dulcie HOLLAND (1913-2000)
Sonata for Violin and piano (1937) [14:52]
Asmira Woodward-Page, violin, Scott Davie, piano
Recorded in August 2001
Linda PHILIPS (1899-2002)
Exaltation (Chassidic Air and Dance) (1930s) [13:30] Anne Gilbey, oboe, Isin Cakmakciogu, violin, Rachel Atkinson, cello, Robert Chamberlain, piano
Recorded live in Iwaki Auditorium, Melbourne, June 6 1999
Miriam HYDE (1913-2005)
Village Fair (1943) [11:18]
Recorded in 1979
Margaret SUTHERLAND (1887-1984)
Haunted hills (1950) [15:19]
Sydney Symphony Orchestra/John Hopkins
Recording date unknown
Moya HENDERSON (b. 1941)
Kudikynah Cave (1987) [6:16]
Acacia Quartet
Recorded in the Ultimo Centre, Sydney in 2013
Katia TIUTIUNNIK (b. 1967)
The Quickening (2004) [6:05]
Lara Chislett, flute, Stephanie McCallum, piano
Recorded in Sydney Conservatorium, December 2014
Elena KATS-CHERNIN (b. 1967)
Eliza Aria from Wild Swans-Concert Suite (2004) [3:17]
Jane Sheldon, soprano, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Ola Rudner
Recorded in Hobart, August 2004
Disc 2
Katy ABBOTT (b. 1971)
Punch for brass and percussion (2013) [2:15]
Ensemble conducted by Brett Kelly
Recorded at the ABC Southbank Centre, 14 December 2014
MARY FINSTERER (b. 1962)
Lake Ice-Missed Tales 1 (2013) [19:30]
Recorded live in the City Recital Hall, Sydney, 29 August 2013
AMANDA COLE (b. 1979)
Glocken Blocken [4:48]
Claire Edwardes, marimba and cowbells
Recorded in Ultimo Centre, Sydney, 22 June 2015
Miriam YOUNG (b. 1975)
Time and Tide (2014) [10:11]
Amanda Tillett, trombone, Sami Butler, percussion
Recorded 14 September 2018 in the Ultimo Centre, Sydney
Rachel BRUERVILLE (b. 1991)
Dancing on Tiptoes (2018) [3:02]
ACO Collective
Recorded at Trackdown Studios, Sydney, February 27 - March 2 2018
Natalie NICOLAS (b. 1992)
We won’t let you down (2018) [4:11]
ACO Collective
Recorded at Trackdown Studios, Sydney, February 27 - March 2 2018
Ella MACHENS (b. 1991)
The Space Between Stars (2018) [13:14]
Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Jessica Cottis
Recorded in Sydney Opera House, May 8 2019
Deborah CHEETHAM (b. 1964)
Eumerella, a War Requiem for Peace – two excerpts (2019) [6:02]
Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of the Melbourne Conservatorium and the Melbourne Youth Orchestra/Benjamin Northey
Recorded live at Hamer Hall, Melbourne, June 15 2019
Nadia SIMPSON (b. 1975)
Wilga’s Last Dance (2018) [3:36]
Royal Australian Navy Band
Recorded at the Ultimo Centre, Sydney, December 5 2018
